More than four years have passed since what eastern Europeans refer to euphemistically as "the changes." In some ways, communism in eastern Europe is still alive and well. September elections in Poland brought a number of genuine communists back to office, largely in response to 20 percent unemployment and the absence of a light at the end of that tunnel. And in Romania, one must look hard to find evidence of real change since 1989, even though the fear of arbitrary arrest for political or other reasons seems to have receded. But two of the most advanced nations in the region, the Czech Republic and Hungary, are making the transition to a market-based economy. Historically the most Western of the former Soviet satellites, they offer more encouraging signs. Although it is difficult to convince the average Czech or Hungarian that things are better, or even that they will get better soon, change does appear to have taken hold.
CZECH AND DOUBLE-CHECK
"Czechs are Westerners and have always been so," asserts Jiri Dienstbier, foreign minister of Czechoslovakia before it split and became the Czech Republic and Slovakia. "Although our country was free and sovereign for a mere 30 years, we always considered ourselves part of the West both economically and politically. It's no accident that the elevated freeway that bisects the center of our capital is named Wilsonova: Tomas Masaryk, our first president, was a Wilsonian democrat."
Never independent before 1919, the Czech lands were part of something else--first the Holy Roman Empire and later Austria-Hungary. Less than two decades after independence was achieved, their mineral wealth and industrial capability attracted first Hitler, who absorbed it into his Reich, and then the Soviets, who sealed them from the West for the next 45 years. So neither a democratic tradition nor a capitalist structure had time to establish itself.
The communists recognized quality, and to take advantage of the highly skilled labor force, they modernized Czech factories to a greater degree than those of neighboring countries. Czechoslovakia remained the foremost supplier of armaments to much of the Third World, its excellent brown pilsner beer was exported widely, and the work of Bohemian glassmakers was prized by collectors worldwide.
This kind of "favored treatment" has enabled the new nation to remain more advanced than its neighbors. As there seemed little at first glance to prevent a successful transition, it became the logical target of many of the millions of Western investment dollars poured into eastern Europe immediately following 1989.
Then early in 1991,
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